


tales of whales, masks and sails

by murderouscrows



Series: Tales of Dad and his Whalers [1]
Category: Dishonored (Video Game)
Genre: Dad!Daud, Gen, Oneshot, Orphans, Single Parents, Slum AU, Young!Whalers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-20
Updated: 2013-07-20
Packaged: 2017-12-20 20:25:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/891477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/murderouscrows/pseuds/murderouscrows
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He wasn't sure when he started calling them the Whalers and stopped calling them children.</p>
            </blockquote>





	tales of whales, masks and sails

**Author's Note:**

> also up on tumblr: http://murderous-crows.tumblr.com/post/55988454675/tales-of-whales-masks-and-sails

He wasn’t exactly sure when he started calling them Whalers.

If Daud had to guess, it probably would have all begun when Finn and Jenkins came home after a day of collecting. Sometimes some of the older children would wander off during the day to see if they could find anything useful. Hell knew that they could use whatever they could get in these trying times. For the most part, Daud didn’t have much discretion on the matter as long as they never went alone and were never out past sundown. As long as there was light out, most of the children had enough street smarts to keep themselves out of trouble.

Usually, the two boys would come home with very few things of practical use – this particular day being no different than the rest. However, the two children had caused enough commotion fretting over one of their findings and had piqued the interest of the rest of the misfit bunch. Very early in their lives, they all learned that anything that was worth the interest of the others was worth the interest of their own – if by interest he meant possession and by that he meant thieving.

It wasn’t long before Daud had to get in and pull Jenkins off of Geoff, scold Kent for biting Jordan’s ear, separate Thorpe from Quinn’s legs, soothe Zachary who had been startled awake in all of the commotion, and snatch whatever godforsaken item had riled them all up in the first place to avoid any further conflict. Even after he had separated the bane of the day from the premises, it didn’t stop the kids from wreaking absolute havoc. And frankly, his shouting at them to calm down really wasn’t helping either because he was seriously ready to leash them up all up like dogs and call it a day. It wasn’t until Billie stalked into the room and quieted the child monsoon like a fucking goddess that Daud even got a chance to look at the stupid object that had already caused him so much trouble.

It was with only slight exasperation that he realized it was nothing more than a simple whaling mask. It was a nasty, old, decrepit thing, honestly – most things were. However, it was quite obvious to Daud that Jenkins and Finn must have traveled pretty far to find the thing. The slums were one thing, but the grime on the dingy mask gave him the idea that the two boys had found it somewhere off in the river krust-infested districts which Daud was pretty insistent on keeping the kids away from. It didn’t shock him that they had picked it up. After all, it wasn’t every day that they found something as distinguishable as a whaling mask.

Then again, Daud wasn’t even sure that any of the children had ever seen one before.

Still, it amused him that something so meaningless as the old whaling mask had gained more worth in the eyes of the children in five minutes than most things had seemed to in their whole, albeit short, lives. Had Finn and Jenkins not come home with it, none of them would have even been aware of its existence and their menial lives would have continued on without any disturbance. It was annoying really.

He should just throw the mask away.

The children would ask about it, but he could simply feign ignorance. That usually worked, at least with the younger ones. Billie would know, but she wouldn’t say anything. Some of the other older kids would probably suspect that he was lying, but they most likely wouldn’t know what to do about it. And yet, he knew that it would upset them. Just because the mask would no longer be there wouldn’t mean that it never was. Daud could just picture the expressions on their faces, how their eyes would get watery, their little noses would turn pink, and their inexperienced brows would downturn just so. But he was the _boss_ , damn it. He should be able to do whatever the hell he wanted to and it shouldn’t mean a thing, tears or not.

The next morning, he found the mask was sitting on his mattress right where he had left it.

Life continued on relatively normally after that. Every once in awhile, Daud would see a couple of the children playing with the mask – putting it on and chasing the rest of them around like some form of the boogeyman or another. It wasn’t until Daud made the mistake of correcting their usage of their makeshift toy that it had even been much of a bother, but he just had to open his mouth and tell them that a whaling mask was meant for whalers not small children.

Once they realized that he obviously knew more than they did about their newest plaything, the questions started coming, and boy did the kids know how to ask questions. They all came so quickly that Daud didn’t even have enough time to fully listen to one nonetheless try to answer any of them. How he had managed to brush them off was a miracle he didn’t know he was even capable off, but he knew that he wouldn’t be able to deny the children for forever. He was never able to truly deny them anything anyway.

That night he told them of a grand tale he used to hear when he was younger though he had forgotten a lot of the details and had to improvise a bit as he went along – not that the kids would have noticed thing either way. It was the kind of tale that Billie would sit back and roll her teenage eyes at, yet be enchanted by nonetheless. It was the kind of tale that would ensnare the children with its vast lore and misadventure. It was the kind of tale that Daud definitely should not have been telling a group of kids of their age group, but he was the only adult here so who the hell really cared?

It had been quite the production, too.

That night, when all of the children should have been fast asleep, they were all in the main room sitting on their mattresses that had been pulled out so that it wouldn’t be hard to get the kids into bed as soon as story time was over. Daud sat above them on one of the only operating chairs they had left holding their makeshift nightlight in his lap so that it cast the kinds of shadows on his face that one would use for dramatic effect. It was then that he couldn’t have helped but to notice the looks on their dirty faces as they stared back up at him. Their eyes had all gleamed with the kind of life Daud hadn’t seen in them in quite a long time.

It had made his heart ache, but his heart _never_ did that.

And so, with mask in hand, the story began with a sailor – a Serkonan sailor who had just set off in a great big whaling ship. The sailor was a brave man, he told them, who had once led a captain-less ship out into stormy seas and caught one of the great Leviathans. The children had become quite riled at the mention of the beast and it took Daud a bit longer than he had liked to reel them back in and continue telling the story and he had only just introduced the tale. Eventually he was able to begin the actual narrative and it went from there with surprisingly few interruptions. So the tale went on with a sailor out at sea. He wasn’t sure how long he had sat there reciting the adventure of the sailor to the kids, but he knew that it didn’t feel like as long as it had been. By the time that he had finished, all of the children were still watching him with shining eyes. Daud was pretty sure that, when it came to bed time stories, the kiddies were supposed to fall asleep half way through, or something. Yet here they were, wide awake and wanting to hear another, while Billie – the one who was _supposed_ to help Daud with the rascals – had fallen asleep against the wall next to him.

The kids let him up with minor groaning when he told them that they would continue story time tomorrow night, and putting them to bed that day had been surprisingly easy. He had very few objections when the children had asked him to tell another story about the sailor the next night, and the night after that, and the night after that, and it eventually turned into their nightly routine.

But Daud wasn’t sure when he started calling them Whalers, and stopped calling them children.

The days that passed after the first retelling of the life of the sailor were not without their excitement for sure. The kids were a lot louder, for one, but they seemed happier. Daud had a really hard time telling them to “shut the fuck up” when he could see them having so much fun with one another. It went without saying that their lives were not easy. Living in the slums was hard enough, he couldn’t even imagine how growing up in them affected the psyche. Frankly, everyone deserved to be happy once in awhile so, for the most part, he let them be.

They still ran around chasing each other with the whaling mask, but now it was no longer a simple game of cat and mouse. Now it was a daily reenactment of the sailor hunting the great Leviathan or the sailor fighting with the Tyvian pirates. Some days it would even be the sailor and his misadventures with the lovely empress in which one of the boys would try to swoon Billie with melodramatic suave and false chivalry.

Regardless of what the children did with the mask during the day, it was always story time with it before bed and that was something that all of them looked forward too. So as time went on, Daud found that he had begun to refer to them as his little Whalers more and actual children less.

After all, the slums are not a place for children. 


End file.
